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Right Wings Groups Sponsor Journalism Award Named for Andrew Breitbart

There are times when you see a story and you do a double take because it must be an article from The Onion, right? In this case, no. The Heritage Foundation and Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity have teammed up “to pay tribute to the monumental achievements of Andrew Breitbart‘s work, and the recognition of those who continue his legacy by carrying the torch for freedom and truth.”

The words “Breibart” and “truth” should never been in the same sentence.

And for those not keeping score, the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity is where former Register scribe Steven Greenhut plys his trade. From the Franklin Center’s website: “Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity was founded in 2009 to address falling standards in the media as well as a steep falloff in reporting on state government and provides professional training; research, editorial, multimedia and technical support; and assistance with marketing and promoting the work of a nationwide network of nonprofit reporters. Supplementing these efforts is our newly launched Citizen Watchdog program that trains ordinary citizens to report from local communities.”

So if I get this straight, the Franklin Center is lending its name to an awards program for journalism excellence in honor of Andrew Breitbart?

Now you can pretty much honor anyone for a “prestigious” Breitbart Award by going to this site and following the instructions. But you can’t make this stuff up:

Following in Andrew Breitbart’s footsteps, journalists are uncovering political corruption, government malfeasance, and incompetence and scandal after political scandal.

In honor of Andrew’s monumental achievements and of those who continue his legacy by carrying the torch for freedom and truth, the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity and Heritage Foundation are proud to open nominations for the 2013 Breitbart Awards.

Please help us pay tribute to Andrew by nominating an individual whose efforts advance the spirit of his work.

Andrew’s tragic passing will no doubt continue to be mourned for years and years to come. Yet I believe in my heart, he wouldn’t’t want us to mourn, he would want us to pick up the torch, light up major news stories others are not’t covering, and set this world afire.

Breitbart’s legacy isn’t so much watchdog journalism as it was a tar and feathering. Yellow journalism would have been a step up. Gawker.com reminds up of the slippery slope Breitbart provided.

But in 2009, “whey-faced little shit” James O’Keefe and Florida dumbbelle dropout Hannah Giles went around the country to ACORN offices, playing dress-up, and talking with low-level representatives about their plans for illegal behavior, mostly relating to prostitution and sex trafficking. The videos, released on Breitbart’s new website, Big Government, were heavily edited, and O’Keefe never appeared on camera, raising questions as to the veracity of Breitbart’s claim that ACORN was facilitating crime in poor communities.

But when it was all over, ACORN was bankrupted, targeted by Congress, roasted by the talking heads. A good organization was taken under by a massive series of lies given life by a media that, rather than interrogate the obviously baseless accusations made against them, uncritically accepted them.

BradBlog.com was the site that thoroughly fact checked Breitbart and O’Keefe’s stories, but the Right Wing Noise Machine continued to howl for the heavily edited “truth.” Breitbart never released the raw footage to show how the story had been doctored. The story on BardBlog is huge with lots of backup to demonstrate the untruths told by O’Keefe and Breitbart. O’Keefe was of course arrested in US Senator Mary Landreau’s office for some sort of “gotcha” story and was fined $1500 with 100 hours of community service, and if O’Keefe is the standard for the Pulitzer Prize, someone ought to bring Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair out of journalism exile.

Back to Gawker’s “obit” for a minute. Perhaps Mr. Greenhut ought to check these assertations out to still see if honoring Breitbart with a “truth and freedom” journalism award is really worthwhile.”

Hell, for all his machismo, he was a cold sweating skink when trapped in a corner. Blogger Mike Stark bent Breitbart into a stuttering wreck over the ACORN vids, leaving the clam belly to sputter that he couldn’t “legally” discuss his starmaking moment, like some mob snitch bombing on the stand. Even a milquetoast like George Stephanapoulos shamed him on air like a tongue-tied toddler over the Sherrod story. His crew of flunkies is a menagerie of some of the most hideous detritus collected around a political figure since the Gaddafi family fled into the four winds.

So it appears this award is realy for journalists who make stuff up. And if that’s the case, there’s a few I’d like to nominate myself.

Left wing talking heads like Dan Rather are more to Chmielewski’s liking. You will recall that Dan Rather and his co-conspirators attempted to throw a presidential election with forged documents, smearing then President George Bush. That’s just fine, right Chmielewski?

Then there was the CNN Executive Vice President who while in Switzerland, I believe, announced that American troops were “targeting the media.” This lying sack of liberalism resigned in disgrace.

Don’t forget the New York Times, which published reports of “torture” week after nauseating week, during the Bush administration. Putting a bag over terrorists’ heads is really evil. But killing them with drones, as Obama has continued to do with relentless efficiency? No problem, right New York Times? Right liberals? Right Chmielewski?

The hypocrisy, the rank dishonesty of liberals is destroying America with accelerating speed.